lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly
improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast
together and moulded our tempers to each other,--when a knowledge of
her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had
deprived it of much of its original ardor. I lost her, alas! (the choice
of my youth, and the partner of my misfortunes,) at a moment when I had
the prospect of her sharing my better days."

But if I am getting old, although perhaps prematurely, I must be casting
about for the _subsidia senectuti_. Swift wrote to Gay, that these
were "two or three servants about you and a convenient house"; justly
observing, that, "when a man grows hard to please, few people care
whether he be pleased or no"; and adding, sadly enough, "I should hardly
prevail to find one visitor, if I were not able to hire him with a
bottle of wine"; and so the sorrowful epistle concludes with the
sharpest grief of all: "My female friends, who could bear with me very
well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me." It is odd that Montaigne
should have hit upon the wine also as among the _subsidia senectuti_;
although the sage Michael complains, as you will remember, that old men
do not relish their wine, or at least the first glass, because "the
palate is furred with phlegms." But I care little either for the liquor
or the lackeys, and not much, I fear, at present, for "the female
friends." I have, then, nothing left for it but to take violently to
books; for I doubt not I shall find almost any house convenient, and I
am sure of one at last which I can claim by a title not to be disturbed
by all the precedents of Cruise, and in which no mortal shall have a
contingent remainder.

To books, then, I betake myself,--to books, "the immortal children" of
"the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,--ay!